Beneath Gray Skies (44 page)

He looked at his watch. “All this will be happening in about forty minutes from now. I said no questions, Rähmer. Just do what I say.”

“Sir,” persisted Rähmer. “My question’s not about why we’re doing this. I think we can all guess something about what’s going on, and speaking for myself, I have no problems with that.” There was a growl of agreement from the crew. Good, thought Eckener to himself. The last thing he wanted was another Dorfmann causing problems. The memory made him wince, as a shaft of pain shot up his back. “My question is what we’re going to tell the passengers, sir.”

“Good thought, Rähmer. Thank you. Tell the passengers that it’s normal landing safety procedures or something. After all, they haven’t been through a landing yet. For all they know, we clear away the parachutes when we’re coming in to land.” He’d have to concentrate, he told himself. He was getting tired. The struggle with Dorfmann had taken more out of him than he supposed. He reminded himself again that he was nearly sixty. Too old. “Right, men, get to it. Oh, Rähmer, one more thing for you.”

“Sir?”

“Before you start collecting parachutes, find me Confederate Sergeant Slater from the passengers and send him to me in the control car, where I’m going now.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Eckener made his way forward and down to the control car, where Goering was just finishing what must have been a long, and surprisingly accurate, from what Eckener heard, lecture on Great Circle navigation. He had, however, failed to notice that he had lost his audience some time ago. However Eckener waited for a suitable gap in the flow of words before interrupting.

“Bravo, Herr Minister. Your grasp of navigational principles is most impressive and I almost believe my officers and I could learn a lot from you if you were to continue your fascinating lecture. However, gentlemen, I must ask you all to return to the passenger accommodation while we prepare for our final landing.” There was a move towards the ladder, and Eckener noticed with amusement a look of relief on more than one face at being delivered from Goering’s instruction.

The Confederate politicians made their way up the ladder. Eckener was glad to see that the corpulent General Harrison had not been a visitor to the control car. Eckener doubted his ability to climb up and down the ladder, and had been surprised that the companionways had been large enough for his bulk when he boarded.

As the control car emptied, Eckener thanked Goering once again for his efforts in keeping the visitors entertained, as a youth in Confederate Army sergeant’s uniform made his way down the ladder.

“You again?” asked Goering curiously to the youth.

“You know each other?” asked Eckener incredulously. It seemed hard to believe that a Minister of the Reich would have anything to do with a Confederate non-commissioned officer.

“Oh yes,” replied a smiling Goering. “David and I have been friends for a long time now.” He waved, as he climbed the ladder. Eckener noticed that he favored one leg as he did so.

Eckener waited until Goering had gone, and closed the ladder hatchway.

“Sergeant Slater,” he said in rusty, but understandable English. “You have some strange friends, I think?”

“The Minister is no friend of mine, Captain,” said the Sergeant. Eckener had to attune his ear to the strange accent, but he got the meaning.

“I was not just talking about Minister Goering, Sergeant. Do you know a Major Weisstal?”

“Yes, sir. We have spent a lot of time together and he has been very friendly and kind to me. He has taught me a lot about airship ground handling procedures, and he and I play chess together sometimes.”

Very strange, thought Eckener. He had never thought of Weisstal as preferring boys, but then it just went to show how little you knew about a man. Still, the youth didn’t seem that type, either.

“I have just had a radio message from Major Weisstal. We—the crew, I mean—will jump by parachute from the airship when we reach Cordele. You will jump with us.”

“And the passengers? President Davis, and his Cabinet? And Goering and Hitler?”

“They will remain on board,” replied Eckener sternly. He watched Slater carefully. A look of horror, followed by understanding, crossed the sergeant’s face.

“I understand,” said the Confederate. “I understand everything now.”

“What do you mean? Please speak slowly. I can’t understand you when you speak fast,” requested Eckener.

“Well, sir,” said the other. “Major Weisstal tried to stop me going on the airship. And before that, Colonel Vickers was real strange about something that was going to happen today. And then Brian was out when he shouldn’t be.”

“You’re telling me too many things too quickly,” complained Eckener. “Who is this Brian?”

“I don’t rightly know where to start, sir,” replied the sergeant. “He’s English, with some kind of fancy Limey name, but we served together in the 3rd Alabama Regiment and he taught me to play chess. We went to Berlin—”

“
Ach so
,” muttered Eckener.

“That was where he shot Minister Goering, except that he wasn’t a Minister then. Not Brian, Goering, I mean. And I had to write out some Goethe poetry for his wife. Goering’s wife, not Brian’s,” the sergeant added helpfully.

“Sergeant, are you mad, or am I?” asked Eckener, by now hopelessly confused.

“No, sir. I’m telling you the truth. After Brian shot Goering he ran away in Berlin.”

Eckener remembered a rumor that had circulated at the time of the Nazi coup about Goering attempting to rape a Jewish girl who had been rescued by a foreigner who’d shot Goering in the course of the struggle. “Go on,” he said weakly.

“Well, sir, after I came here, I mean to Cordele, sir, Brian turned up again. But then it turned out he was a British spy, working against the Nazis. They caught him and locked him up, but he was out today.”

“Well, Sergeant, Major Weisstal has decided that you’re coming off the airship with us.”

“What about the President, sir?” asked the sergeant. “I mean, the Nazis are your business. If you want to get rid of them, that’s up to you Germans. I don’t mind. But that’s my President back there,” jerking a thumb back aft where the passenger car was located.

“If you’ll excuse me, Captain,” suggested Hofschmidt, one of the navigators, who had been listening raptly, with all the crew in the control car, to this strange conversation. “Captain, can you brief the rest of us on what’s going on?”

“Certainly,” replied Eckener. He outlined the situation to the assembled crewmen and finished with “Count the parachutes. We should have enough for all of us here to have one, and we need an extra one for the sergeant here. Throw the rest overboard.”

“Sir?” suggested Hofschmidt. “With all due respect, my English is better than yours, since I lived in America for some years. Maybe I can try to explain things to the sergeant?”

Eckener shrugged. “Go ahead, Hofschmidt,” he said.

“Listen to me, Sergeant,” said Hofschmidt to the youth. “I realize that President Davis is your President, but a lot of people think that your people would be better off without him and his style of government. You think Major Weisstal’s fairly smart, don’t you? Well, Major Weisstal must think that way, or he wouldn’t have sent us that message.”

The sergeant shook his head. “I really don’t know what to think. I mean you people obviously think that Hitler and his Nazis need to go, and I can’t say I really argue with you there, after what I’ve seen in Berlin and heard around the place. But my own President, I don’t know.” He pursed out his lips and expelled his breath, shaking his head again.

“Believe me, I admire your devotion to your country and your loyalty to your President. But he agrees with everything the Nazis do. All the bad things the Nazis do, your President’s backing them all the way. That’s why they’re together. But wouldn’t you like to see the Confederacy get better?”

“Yeah, I reckon,” suspiciously. “How?”

“If your government changes, many more countries in the world are going to become friends with the Confederacy. And that means more money. I’m guessing you never went to college, did you?”

David shook his head. “No money to go there.”

“That’s just the sort of thing that would change. More people would have more money. Listen, you’re obviously an intelligent man. Do you think that it’s right to keep other people as slaves?”

“Never really thought about it, I reckon.” Actually, David had always had a sneaking feeling that there was something wrong with slavery. Some of the darkies he’d met were pretty smart, and he knew they had feelings just like he did. “No,” he admitted after a pause. “I guess it’s not that right.”

“If there’s a new government, you might see some changes there as well. But I tell you, nothing’s going to change while your President Davis is in charge. And he’s not going to give up power just like that, you know.”

David turned all this over in his mind. “You think there’s a chance that things will get better for the likes of me if there’s a change?”

“I’d say there was a very good chance of just that.”

“And this is how the change is going to come, you’re saying to me?”

“Well, this is one way to make it happen. Believe me.”

Silence from the sergeant as he considered this. His original resolve seemed to be wavering.

“Listen to me,” said Hofschmidt. “Even if you don’t agree with what I’ve just told you, if we let you go back and warn your President, just look at how many there are of us to stop you. What good will it do him anyway? We control the airship. By the time you get there and he comes here, we’ll be gone out of that hatch. And not just us. All the engineers, all the riggers, all the radiomen. What are the politicians going to do? What are you going to do? Better jump with us.”

“I’d feel like an awful coward.”

“If I’m right, you’ll be looked on as a hero,” retorted Hofschmidt. “They’ll see you as one of those who helped to save the South.”

“Yeah?” said the sergeant skeptically, but he sounded at least half-convinced by now.

“Cordele coming up to port,” called Müller. “Fifteen degrees to port, helmsman. Nose down five degrees, elevators.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” and the rudder and elevator helmsmen carried out their orders.

“It doesn’t look like I have a real choice,” said the sergeant.

“Good man,” replied Hofschmidt. “Now let’s get you into one of these parachutes.”

“How far to Cordele, Müller?” asked Eckener, adjusting the straps of his own parachute.

“About ten minutes, sir,” replied Müller.

“Time for you to get your parachute on, then. I’ll take the conn.”

“Aye, aye, sir. You have the conn.”

“And you two,” said Eckener, pointing to two of the navigation crew, “take the elevator and rudder and you two there now, get your parachutes on.”

In a matter of a few minutes, all the crew of the control car and the Confederate sergeant were wearing their parachutes. The elevator and rudder helmsmen resumed their posts, and continued to follow Eckener’s orders, bringing
Bismarck
down in a wide circle towards Cordele.

Eckener rang the telegraphs to the engine nacelles to slow the airship’s speed as the airship came down to approximately two hundred meters over the mooring mast.

“It’s time,” he said, and thrust the telegraph levers forward and backward twice. In a matter of seconds, the bow went down, as the engine crews jumped out of the nacelles. Müller, looking towards the stern, counted the parachutes as they opened.

“All out, Captain,” he reported.

“Good,” replied Eckener, opening a small box mounted beside the helmsman’s compass, exposing a large brass handle. “Pod away!” he called, pulling the handle.

“I see the signal smoke from the pod, sir, but it looks as though it hasn’t fallen free yet.”

“Hell and damnation!” swore Eckener, working the handle back and forth.

“No, sir, the pod’s still with us,” called out Müller.

“Our people are more important,” said Eckener, picking up the voice tube to the radio car. “We can worry about the treasure later.” Privately, he wondered as he gave the order to evacuate to the radiomen, exactly how much there would be of a “later.”